Attendees: Chris Mills (Mozilla, Chair), Daniel Appelquist (Samsung), Reeza Ali (Microsoft), Kyle Pflug (Microsoft), Joe Medley (Google), Dominique Hazael-Massieux (W3C), Jory Burson (Boucoup), Kadir Topal (Moz), Ali Spivak (Independent).
- Date/Time: May 12, 2020, 09.30 Pacific / 17.30 UK time / 18:30 Europe
- Location: Mozilla Zoom room
- Meeting kick off
- Intros!
- MDN docs: current areas of focus (15mins)
- Front-end web developer learning pathway:
- Modern tooling
- Client-side JS frameworks
- Adding assessments
- Research to follow to see where we should go next
- Web security docs updates
- PWAs
- WebXR
- Concerted effort around WebAuthn adoption - cf https://www.w3.org/community/webauthn-adoption/
- Front-end web developer learning pathway:
- Update on MDN’s subscription service (5 mins)
- Update on move to Github (5 mins)
- Updates on the DNA survey project (10 mins)
- What constitutes the Web Platform for purposes of MDN? There are a number of issues. What is MDN's policy towards incubations and experimental feature flags, for example? (10 mins)
- Agree on next meeting (Monthly for now; Chris sent out Doodle Poll) Any other business (10 mins)
- Feedback on tooling stuff
- Dan A advocacy group could help.
- We want feedback on pretty much anything under https://wiki.developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Learn/Tools_and_testing, but particularly:
- We got feedback from developers in the Web DNA and other places that security is a hard thing to deal with on the Web.
- There is a project under way to update the security docs on MDN
- PWAs docs are being updated with help from PAB members
- WebXR is a Mozilla lead effort to update and complete docs on MDN
- WebAuthn - Dom has people who might be interested in working on the docs - could this fit into the MDN web security project?
y/y traffic continues to rise Week traffic similar, but weekend traffic has almost doubled during the pandemic period No definite knowledge, but possibly due to more people learning for possible career changes, etc.
Working on subscription service, to allow people to donate to Mozilla Now nearly ready to go.
Become a monthly supporter banner Pay page, with perks, membership number, schwag discount.
Q: Will it support web payments? Yes, later on. Will help to reduce friction.
Q: Are we supporting non-credit card payments, like WePay, AliPay? Yes. We are starting with credit cards, but moving on to supporting others later on.
Q: Will I be able to pay for a year at a time instead of month-by-month? Not at launch time, but it's one of the things we'd like to add very soon.
Two goals for Q3:
- Reduce friction
- Get it in front of more users
Dom feedback:
- Agrees that we shouldn’t wait for crisis to end
- Web devs are among the least affected
- Also make sure it is ultra clear that we are not putting a paywall in front of MDN.
Ali feedback:
- Might make sense to launch with a tagline along the lines of “we will never charge for content”.
- People often have knee jerk reaction about payments involving all-encompassing paywall, or being mandatory. Good therefore to be explicit
Jory:
- Also look at language that patreon/open collectives use. Very much like sponsoring an open source project, so see what they have done. (you don’t get charged for using the tool, etc.)
This is the year we move to GitHub. Main objectives:
- Reduce maintenance/cost
- Offer better contributor experience (PR model, etc.)
Major undertaking
Two phases:
- Editing HTML in GitHub. Change where content is stored, but keep front end as much as possible right now.
- Move to markdown/more structured content
Major open questions:
- Contribution experience - how much tooling do we still need to provide?
- We are currently working on an MVP, to be shared with writers, get feedback on what the pain points are, and what mitigations we need.
- L10n - had this since the start, but we don’t deal with it properly, quality varies a great deal. Also:
- Do people use l10n content
- Do they just use automated l10n
- Is it worth it? It is expensive
- Currently doing research on this.
Qs
Timelines? GitHub by end of year, but roadmap is fairly vague right now. Too many unknowns at present.
Dom — pr-preview in W3C. We have a lot of experience here. We should discuss this. It would be a shame to lose l10n content on MDN - language barrier is big in terms of emergent communities.
Jory — call for accessibility review. Comment on supporting writers with this new system, but in terms of accessing the content, and accessing the editing workflow.
Kyle — I'll see if we can share numbers (not sure), but we were pleasantly surprised by the adoption of localized DevTools in Edge. I suspect this is a broader need than may be immediately obvious.
Survey now has finance (from Google/MS), and Mozilla will still run the survey.
Due to this, things are being shifted a bit later. We wanted to get things done by May, because after that you normally get a downturn in MDN usage. This is not definite yet; timeline currently a bit up in the air.
But in the current COVID situation, this will probably not have as big an effect.
The survey will be run over 4-6 weeks.
Dom - when will you have a more definite timeline? Not sure yet; situation currently out of our control.
- Kick off in June?
- 1-2 months of prep
- 6 weeks of running survey
- 1-2 month of preparing report
Jory - Bocoup is really keen to find space to support the survey. What role would you like to see PAB members play here?
Kadir - feedback on survey design is very important. Feedback on questions themselves. Also specific to beaucoup - first half of report is survey results, second half is feedback on web dev pain points. What work is being done to fix these?
- First half is for implementers
- Second half is for web devs
https://bocoup.github.io/web-platform-contribution-guide/ - adopt some of this language to help explain how things get fixed?
Also think about adapting Mozilla platform status site to share updates?
https://w3c.github.io/web-roadmaps/mobile/ might be another inspiration to "longer term" view of the platform
Inconsistencies
Incubations should not be on MDN ? Fair point of view.
But there is opposition to Google’s wish to remove their flags off of the BCD?
But for advancement of the web, we need to have experimental stuff talked about somewhere, so they can kick the tyres, etc.
So we should decide if such info is included on MDN. And if so, where do we include it, and how do we mark/label it.
a somewhat related discussion in the context of W3C incubation program w3c/tr-design#177 this ties back to the convergence of "platform status" data I think. Clarity on present, but also future too. What we are looking to implement, across different vendors.
Dan - a good example is Web Bluetooth. Been around for a while, supported in Chromiums, not on MDN.
Also web manifest feature with obsolete banner on it. Not a good way to include people, or made them feel good. Is
Dual screen layout features are one we're interested in @ Microsoft. Right now all our docs are in explainers or docs.microsoft.com, it would be great to have a PAB POV on whether those should go to MDN PAB as well/instead.
Look for convergence on model for sharing platform data/status. Could we also tie this into bcd? Would be really useful info to have How do we present this?
Have shorter, more frequent meetings.
Monthly
For sync meetings, focus on discussions.
Leave status reports to async.
- Chris to talk to Jory about what an MDN short pluralsight course would look like (#70).
- Chris to talk to Jory about what MDN session would make sense at the next collab summit (71).
- Chris to talk to Dan about his advocacy group, and how it could help with getting feedback on the tooling docs (72)
- Dom to introduce Chris to the Web Authn people (73).
- Kadir to gather feedback from the group about messaging around MDN membership/subscriptions (74).
- Related: Jory said to also look at language that patreon/open collectives use. Jory to share examples for Kadir to look at?
- Chris to connect up PAB folks with plan for platform status page/messaging updates, when we get moving here. (75)
- Chris to (re)start discussion about defining what web platform means in terms of what to include on MDN, and where to include experimental information, if it should or shouldn’t go on MDN (76).
- Chris to think about what to do about existing action items / issues, and propose plan (77).
Video call — June 2020